GOD ?

Of late , I have been speaking to lots of people with regard to their belief in god, divinity and their religious philosophies. As a confirmed atheist, I’m quite frequently dumbfounded at how educated people with otherwise extremely logical minds, are all of a sudden, trapped in a cell of insecurity when approached with this topic. More than once have I sensed the feeling , indeed occasionally, the overwhelming desire among such individuals to break free from these age old shackles, but the fear and insecurity of the unknown grips them at the last moment; and they willingly continue to let the memetic virus of god and divinity prey on their minds and hence the society as a whole. I have no doubts that were such people to read a little bit more on the subject , namely authors like Dawins and Dennet, a lot of their ill-founded insecurities and fears would be removed. However suggesting books to people is one thing and , and them acquiring and reading the same is quite another. Hence the purpose of this post is to bring out in a nutshell the most basic arguments pertinent to this matter. Indeed reams could be written , and have been written on the subject, but my objective is to condense all the major arguments into as brief a post as possible. As I have just mentioned , most of my points are grounded firmly on the bastions set by Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennet, 2 of the greatest thinkers of the modern era ; whose works are in turn based chiefly upon Darwinism and the great theory of Natural Selection.

Definition of God

Before mounting any discussion on god, I think it is pertinent to first clear up what the word implies to the educated, amenable to reason , 21st century man. On the face of it, I think most individuals would deny god as being a kind of ‘every breath you take, every move you make, I’ll be watching you’ tyrant Big Brother…as depicted in most scriptures. I fathom that the modern theist’s identity of god is based on the following philosophy – Creation of the universe and of life by intelligent design…. all leading towards some final purpose….the purpose : which most people believe to be the existence of man and his civilization.
To quote the creationist philosopher John Locke – original intentionality springs from God ; we are God’s creatures and derive our intentionality from him
From this stems the cosmic pyramid of Locke, at the top of which sits god, who in turn gives rise to the mind. Most creationist philosophy derives itself from the origin of the mind from God…..when there is a mind , anything that springs from it must have intention. Hence everything that exists and the way it exists is because it was specifically intended to be so by the mind of god and his mind……in other words , a Human- Centric view of life.

GOD
M I N D
D E S I G N
O R D E R
C H A O S
N O T H I N G (The Cosmic Pyramid)





Reversal of the Pyramid : Complexity from Simplicity

The major upheaval that Darwinism brought to science was a complete reversal of the cosmic pyramid. In its most basic form Natural Selection can be defined as a blind , utterly purposeless, mindless, algorithmic process which over long stretches of time gives rise to complex designs from primitive beginnings of sheer chaos and simplicity. These complex forms that have evolved through billions of years , have no purpose; or meaningful existence- they are simply there because at various stages in the past, their ancestors were better suited for survival and propagation under the conditions that prevailed at that particular time- than other species, who did not meet the desired survival criteria and hence do not have any ancestors today. We humans find it impossible to imagine such species and hence cannot imagine their possible existence. For instance, say , if 500 million years ago there were different climatic and environmental survival stresses, then who knows, instead of humans we might have had fire-breathing dragons , and goblins as the dominant life form on earth. Absurd as this may sound, who is to say that of all possible A/G/C/T combinations that form genes and hence , genomes – there could be a possible combination that if expressed correctly could give rise to a Pegasus or a Sphinx. The chances are extremely unlikely, just like randomly picking up letters from the English alphabet for a length of time and expecting to end up with Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’. However, that is precisely what natural selection is - a mindless game of chance which over billions of years gives rise to design and organized form from chaos. Thus, what the reversal of the cosmic pyramid has most effectively achieved , is to overthrow the ‘Human-centric’ view of life- which essentially claims that the universe , the earth and all the laws governing them were made so that humans and their civilization could exist . Humans exist simply because their ancestors had survived and undergone serial modifications in their genome , culminating in the 46 XX/ 46 XY.


The Weak Anthropic Principle and the final rejection of intelligent design

The weak anthropic principle is a summation of the above concepts and serves aptly to deal a veritable death blow to Human-centrism. In its most basic form it states that – “the world does not exist so that we , humans, may live here ; but if the world existed in any other form , we would not be here to see it.”….simple and lucid enough, I think , to not warrant any further explanation.
A lot of theist scientists still hold onto one final hope for intelligent design by postulating that – for life to exist, even at the origins, where 2 nucleotides drifted together in the primitive soup to form the first semblance of nucleic acid (i.e. RNA/DNA); at least the original machinery of replicator and replicator power – i.e. of DNA and protein – that makes further evolution of comples design possible , in an intelligent meaningful manner. In other words , god created the start of life , set the laws for its evolution and thereafter let nature take its course.
Dawkins convincingly refutes this theory and the final hope for intelligent design in the following statement – “ Organised complexity is the thing we are having difficulty explaining. Once allowed simply to postulate organized complexity , if only the complexity of DNA/protein replicating engine – it is relatively easy to evolve it as a generation of yet more organized complexity…..but any God capable of intelligently designing something as complex as DNA/protein replicating machine , MUST HAVE BEEN AT LEAST AS COMLEX & ORGANISED as the machine itself.” In other words, it is far more likely and easier to explain for life to have originated totally by random chance in the primitive soup, than by the designs of an intelligent creator.
Thus, Darwinism , at its very core explains the existence of a world that is purely mechanistic and entirely devoid of any ‘meaning’ or ‘purpose’ – working blindly within the framework of the scientific laws without a single thought to what the end product is ; and as a result , very efficiently bringing to naught the hypothesis of intelligent design and creation …in other words, GOD.


Occam’s Razor : The Celestial Teacup

The final point which I wish to touch upon is to encounter the accusation of philosophers who claim that the God hypothesis is beyond science, and since science cannot effectively disprove the existence of God, you cannot comment on his non-existence….in other words atheism v agnosticism .
The analogy of the celestial teacup is a delightful counter to this point. What would your reaction be if someone told you there is a huge teacup…say 30 kms wide , which orbits the sun ; somewhere between the orbits of earth and mars. You cannot see it evenwith your mostpowerful telescopes, but you have to simply have faith and believe in it…in case you cannot do so remain silent. Even the strongest theist would laugh at the idea , saying that although it cannot be disproved , the idea is so improbable that it is not worth believing. The same applies to the God Hypothesis – the absolute non-existence of god cannot be proved ( till date at least) – but science has made the probability of god’s existence so micro-miniscule that it is not worth believing in. Since you are not agnostic about the teapot, why should you be agnostic about god ?


There are plenty of points, theories, examples which I would dearly have loved to toush upon but that would have compromised on the brevity of the post…something I was very loth to do . Already , I fear, the length of the post maybe too long for the patience of some . For those who’ve read through the whole post , would be glad to discuss any points , objections , contradictions etc etc ….drop me a mail or a comment .

Suggested Reading :

Charles Darwin : The Origin of Species

Richard Dawkins : The Selfish Gene
The Blind Watchmaker
The God Delusion

Daniel Dennet: Darwin’s Dangerous Idea
Matt Ridley : Genome